


Boxing Day

by DJClawson



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Boxing, Don't ask me how just roll with it, Gen, M/M, Post-Season 3 AU, Pre-Slash, Ray isn't dead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-26
Updated: 2018-12-26
Packaged: 2019-09-25 13:25:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17122205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DJClawson/pseuds/DJClawson
Summary: On paid leave from the FBI and with his family abroad, Ray finds a way to fill the hours.





	Boxing Day

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pogopop](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pogopop/gifts).



> Thanks to LachesisMeg for her beta work!
> 
> Filling the Secret Santa prompt:  
> Matt/Ray (can't tag Ray)  
> Ray didn't die. Don't be silly.  
> Something Matt/Ray, but no smut. Maybe boxing, or Matt teaches Ray. And verbal sparring.

Ray Nadeem had no idea how Matt Murdock did any of the things he did. Sure, he’d explained it - sort of - but Ray felt like “heightened senses” didn’t begin to cover it.

“You’re wrapping too tightly,” Matt said, because he knew that somehow. “You said you did this before?”

“I went through basic training.” But Ray let Matt inspect the wrappings with his hands and start removing them anyway. “How can you tell?”

Matt looked at him - or slightly in the direction of his ear - and said, “They were too tight. Cutting off circulation causes your fingers to swell.”

“Your dad teach you how to wrap your hands?”

Matt shook his head. “He didn’t want me to fight. Wanted me to use my head.”

“And look where that got you.”

Matt laughed. “How did you know about my dad?”

“Aside from the poster from his fight still being on the wall?” Ray gestured to the yellowing ads from Fogwell’s glory days. “I did do preliminary background research before we raided your apartment.”

“And if you’d been a little more thorough, you would have figured out Fisk was lying.”

Ray didn’t tell Matt that fighting was a dirty sport and his father threw fights for cash. He figured either Matt knew (the same way he knew everything, Ray supposed) or Jonathan Murdock went happy to his grave knowing that Matt didn’t and now was the wrong time to bring it up. “You did take money from him.”

“Funny, his name wasn’t on the check,” Matt said. Obviously, he didn’t need to look down at Ray’s hands as he worked on them. “They should be tight enough to stay in place without being constricting. Under gloves they’ll stay in place on their own, so don’t worry about them slipping off.”

“I don’t want to hit you with my bare hands.”

“What?” the Devil grinned. “Think I can’t take it?”

 _Don’t say anything about hitting a blind man, don’t say anything about hitting a blind man_ \- “I know that your skull can be pretty thick. I don’t want to bust my knuckles. Plus all of the bacteria in here?”

Fogwell’s was old, abandoned, and smelled like it. Maybe a gym made mostly of metal and concrete hadn’t smelled great in its better days, but at least someone was mopping up. Matt needed to hang some air fresheners if he wanted to keep inviting people here.

“Just another empty storefront in midtown Manhattan,” Matt said. “Enjoy it before it becomes a Duane Reade.”

“It would be an improvement.”

“It has character.”

“Character smells like dirty socks,” he said as Matt tied off his second hand. “If the FBI hadn’t frozen my sponsored gym membership - “

“Then what, you’d be enjoying a hot tub with other sweaty people?” Matt said. “And I’m not going to tell you what I can smell on those machines.”

“Please don’t.” Ray lifted his hands in position, or what he thought was position, and took a couple swipes at the air to loosen up his arms. Wow, being on paid leave because the whole department hated a snitch and having his passport confiscated while his family was abroad meant a lot of tension built up in his shoulders. Also, everything else that had happened to him in the past few months. He threw a few experimental punches in Matt’s direction, just to get his attention really, and Matt stood perfectly still, not even remotely close to being on guard. He did not look impressed. “Come on. Not all of us can be psychopathic vigilantes who punch people for a living.”

“Psychopathic?”

“I meant it in a nice way and you know it.”

“It’s also not a very good living,” Matt said. “Let’s start with your stance.”

In another life, Matt Murdock would have made a fantastic personal trainer. He could not only tell how when someone was doing something wrong but anticipate _when_ they would do something wrong, all without seeing or needing to feel their body. It was twenty minutes before he even let Ray hit the bag that was definitely a few dozen hits away from coming right off its rusted hinges. Fortunately, Ray had nowhere to be, and his life insurance would probably cover “crushed to death by ancient punching bag.”

The boxing ring didn’t sound great either, creaking a little under his weight. Matt didn’t seem bothered by it, but Matt was a ninja who jumped through car windows and perched on rooftops like a gargoyle, so maybe he wasn’t the best judge of safety. He let Ray get some hits off on him, which Ray was 100% sure was intentional on Matt’s part, but he really made him work for it, so much so that Ray didn’t give up because he couldn’t hit him, but because he was too exhausted to try.

“This place is still disgusting,” Ray said as Matt handed him water. Fucker didn’t even look winded. “I know you have memories here, and that’s charming to you, but it is.”

“I grew up here,” Matt said. “Dad couldn’t afford a babysitter, so I used to hang out in Fogwell’s office with a coloring book.”

“Sounds like quite a childhood.”

Matt gestured with his head to the ring. “I lost my virginity in there.”

“Jesus Christ, Murdock!”

“That didn’t come up in your preliminary investigation?”

“Tell me you at least put a towel down.”

Matt shrugged.

“I’m signing up for Equinox tonight and getting you a guest pass. I am never coming back here.”

“Don’t think Equinox is going to let you box a blind man.”

“We are never coming back here.”

“It was a while ago. The place was still open, and it’s been cleaned since then,” Matt finally qualified. “I don’t generally bring people I want to sleep with to an old gym.”

Ray decided to ... skip right over that. “So you admit that it’s old?”

“I never said it wasn’t.”

“And dilapidated.”

“Looks the same to me.”

“And there’s a sign on the door saying it’s condemned?”

Matt paused, tilting his head like he was listening for something - which he probably was - and said, “You’re lying.”

“Fine. But it is closed for a reason!”

“Yeah, I’m sure rent went up 29% when the old lease was up and Fogwell couldn’t handle it. It’s the story of the whole city. That’s why the dollar store where I used to get cleaning supplies is now a Whole Foods no one can afford to shop at.” He added, “The showers still work.”

“No,” Ray said. “Not in a million years. And I’ve lived in India!”

“Pussy,” Matt replied. “You can’t go home in wet clothes. You’re already shivering.”

Damnit, he was. “Still don’t want to.”

“You want to use my place? It’s not far. As you know. And it has a shower - as you know, since you clearly have no problem busting in without my permission.”

“All of Fisk’s other leads were good!” he insisted. “It was a very high-pressure job. And do you regularly offer to let people use your shower?”

“A surprising amount of times,” Matt said. “Usually when they’ve just been attacked by criminals connected to Fisk and I’ve rescued them. But that’s - it’s only two. It’s a short list.”

“Fine. But no weird stuff.”

“What? Like me busting in and taking things without permission?”

“You’re never going to let this go, are you?”

“Give me time,” Matt said. “And maybe reimburse me for repairing my door and replacing all of the locks. Then we’ll talk.”

Ray couldn’t help but smile at that.

 

The End


End file.
